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But a professional conduct panel – set up by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) – ruled that the religious education teacher should be allowed to return to the classroom because the images were “not at the most serious end" of the scale.

The decision was also signed off by a senior official at the DfE.

It later emerged that the panel cleared a total of 11 male teachers to return to work over a 12 month period even though they were found to have behaved improperly towards pupils as young as 13.

Now the Government has set out revised guidance to the NCTL to be used when deliberating on cases.

It toughens up the definition of sexual misconduct to include any offence met with a police caution or conviction.

For the first time, it also says that all incidents involving indecent images of children should lead to prohibition.

The guidelines had been released in a consultation document last year, being backed by around nine-in-10 people who responded.

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Nothing is more important than ensuring children are protected when they are at school. We have already improved the system to make it tougher than ever before.

“This revised advice sets out our expectation any sexual misconduct and any criminal conviction or caution involving indecent images of children should lead to prohibition from teaching.

“High standards are expected of all teachers, and when making decisions panels should always take into account the need to maintain high levels of public confidence in the profession."

Criticism had previously been directed at the old General Teaching Council for England – which was scrapped by the Coalition – for failing to crackdown on bad behaviour by teachers.

Between 2001/02 and 2009/10, just 115 teachers were barred from the classroom for misconduct or poor teaching.

Numbers increased to 99 in the final two years of the GTC in 2010/11 and 2011/12.

But in the first year of the new NCTL-led disciplinary panel, some 98 teachers have been banned.